Anyone have this aircraft or flying experience in a Helio? Heard it's difficult to land in a crosswind but has excellent STOL capabilities.





CD

If I'm not mistaken, JARS uses these for their operations in the jungle. I had a chance to control one in a demo flight and it was great.

John

Cubdude wrote:...experience in a Helio? Heard it's difficult to land in a crosswind but has excellent STOL capabilities.
CD

I've seen a local fellow land his Helio Courier on the strip of pavement that connects the taxiway to the runway, so that he could put it down into the wind, in a crosswind that would keep some of the other aircraft really on their toes, when landing on the runway itself. The Helio seemed almost to hover onto the taxiway. It must've had a 25 mph stall speed. Very sweet ship. (Currently languishing, dissassembled for complete restoration.)
Tailwinds, Berk

P.S. An interesting side-note is the story that the C.I.A. had the Helio Courier designed & built to smuggle loads of Heroin out of the short strips of South East Asia. Anyone heard anything else on that subject? The things they don't tell you in History & Civics Class.

Helio was always a favorite of mine.
The geared prop was not though. There was a turbine powered low timer in central America I tried to buy. Still have the pics on CD somewhere...
Can you imagin the insurance ?

Quote
P.S. An interesting side-note is the story that the C.I.A. had the Helio Courier designed & built to smuggle loads of Heroin out of the short strips of South East Asia. Anyone heard anything else on that subject? The things they don't tell you in History & Civics Class.[/quote]

Are you sure about your choice of words ?
Designed by and for CIA to smuggle drugs ?? you got that where ?comawn

There were Helio's and Skywagons sporting rockets under the wings in Viet Nam- Cambodia. Air America movie shows what I consider the Mother of all bush planes-the turbine Helio.
http://www.helioaircraft.com/images/top ... litary.jpg
http://www.skywagons.org/gallery/albums ... a_U_17.jpg
http://www.skywagons.org/gallery/albums ... .sized.jpg

Helio's were out 10 years before we sent advisors to se asia were'nt they? I thought the koppen bollinger helio plane was originally designed for business man to land in unimproved strips.The first helio was a piper pacer i beleive.

winger wrote: Air America movie shows what I consider the Mother of all bush planes-the turbine Helio.

Was there a turbine Helio in that movie? I'm sure Air America used them, but I only remember the Pilatus Porter in the movie. I need to watch it again, what a fun flick. We need more flying/buddy movies.

I think it was the Pilatus that drove into the inside of the 130 shearing the wings off ? A classic, in a different time and space than Fandago.

The Helio Courier was designed as a class project at MIT. Yes, THAT MIT. An acronym, but not quite the same as the Central Intelligence Agency.

Air America, a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA, had some Helio STALLIONS built for them. I'm not sure the Stallion was ever cerificated, but it was equipped with a turbine engine. The Agency used both Stallions and Turbo Porters extensively in Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam.


There are a couple Stallions in this country, but I believe they are operating as Experimentals, and/or limited category aircraft.

As to what the Agency did with all those airplanes, if you knew, they'd have to kill you.



MTV

They are a great plane, carry big loads and can use supercub strips. The worst complaint I know of is that the ones with the movable leading edge slats can really get nasty if you are low and slow in gusty conditions. What happens is that the slats deploy when airspeed decreases so when you get right on the edge and get hit with a gust, even a small one, one wing slat will be out and one wing slam in and now you have one wing flying and one completely stalled! The stalled wing drops hard and usually gains some speed and you can get to where the slats are banging in and out causing all sorts of trouble. You will only do this once 'cause it scares the crap out of you. You need only to go faster or slower or more directly into the wind to avoid it. The other problem I have seen with the one on our field is that you sometimes need six to eight guys to grab the wings and hold the silly thing down in a wind. The old man here can land his like a helicopter in less than thirty knot winds but can't set the tail down or it flies off again. There has been one in use on Mt. Mickinly for years, owned by Lowell Thomas I believe.

The "independance" of the slats is one of the advantages of the design. The slats deploy when the wing nears critical angle of attack, and retract when the wing departs critical AOA on the high side.

The primary thing the slats do that's a bad thing is the noise of them deploying at a critical moment can liven up a load of pax, for sure. It is loud.

Lowell Thomas no longer flies Denali, nor does his Helio. It was a turbo model, and you are correct, he flew it there for many years.

The biggest issue with the Helio is the weight of the tail. Get that thing in deep snow on skis, and it can be a man killer.

MTV

Seems most of them are still located in South America.

Operated by the Missionary aviation community, largely.

MTV

I would be the Helio guy here, so if you want info let me know.......

I've owned three, re-built seven, and have 2500 hours in type, including the Stallion

The Helio Stallion is the best performing back country airplane ever certified, unfortunately only two still exist, and I'll give you some numbers here

188 KTS max. cruise
3500 FPM
1500 mile range with 224 gallons of Jet-A
31,000 foot ceiling
Land and take-off in 250 feet routinely

Here is Tim Greene's Helio Stallion #001.....EAA Award winner 2003

We are having a Helio Gathering at KOSH, Orion Flight Services ramp, May 16-18th, 2008........If you want to attend send me PM or reply here

http://superstol.org/

Cheers
Stephen

Another shot of Tim Greene's Helio Stallion serial no.1

I love those things!

I had a 1955 C-180 and thought I was doing a fair job at short field operations, until I went to a fly-in at Kidron, Ohio.

They were giving Amish folks rides in two Helios, (six per airplane) while I was taking two passengers.

Those helios took off and landed in 1/3rd the distance I was using.

A Helio has always been a dream plane. I have a friend that flew them in SEA years ago that said exactly the same thing about the slats that shorton said, but alluded that it was no big thing once you got over the noise, but would scare the stew out of someone that didn't know better.

The trick is let them come out gradually, sometimes not an option in a crowded environment, but in most cases bring the pitch up to nine degrees and slow it down nicely and they will "creep" out, then depending on the model apply flaps to 30 degrees then you can slow up nicely and plant the bird on the spot and stop within two lengths of the airplane....First time passengers marvel at the extreme slow speeds at which they fly.......Stephen